‘A Perfect Straight-A Person’ : 200 Mourn Girl Killed in Fiery Crash

Kelly Sawyer, the 13-year-old Laguna Niguel girl who died in a fiery crash caused by a man accused of driving drunk, was remembered Friday as a shy teen-ager who loved cats and Chinese food and who was considered dependable by friends and family.

“She may not have been a perfect straight-A student,” the Rev. Steve Perry told more than 200 mourners at Mission Lutheran Church in Laguna Niguel. “But she was a perfect straight-A person.”

It was Kelly’s dependability that landed her a baby-sitting job Nov. 7, watching over Lynn Chaney’s two young children. Kelly and Chaney, 38, were killed early Sunday morning when another motorist rear-ended Chaney’s car as she was driving the teen-ager home along Coast Highway.

The cars burst into flames upon impact. The victims were burned beyond recognition, and the other driver, Richard Harold Wallinger Jr., 25, of South Laguna, has been charged with two counts of manslaughter and one count of felony drunk driving.

Sheriff’s deputies also recovered more than 3.5 ounces of cocaine from Wallinger’s car. He was treated for injuries at UCI Medical Center and is free on $25,000 bail, awaiting a Dec. 1 arraignment.

Kelly’s memorial services was attended by classmates at Niguel Hills Junior High School, members of the Sawyer family’s church and even the firefighters who answered the call at 2 a.m. Sunday morning.

“We’re people too,” Firefighter William Banning said, “the badge and the uniform don’t make us any different.”

Perry told the relatives, family friends and classmates of Kelly who came to the service that “like Kelly we, too, are victims . . . of a willful disregard for the lives of others. Victims of a society that still finds the so-called lovable drunk endearing.”

Kelly’s classmates, many of whom left school early to attend the service, said she had been a kind and caring person in whom others confided their problems.

“If someone was mean to you, she’d always come to help, “ said Doyle Sullivan, 13. “Now I feel empty. No one will be there to solve my problems,” she said.

Debbie Sidenfaden, 13, said: “She really kept quiet, but inside I knew she was all heart.”

Other classmates recalled Kelly’s tastes in food, music and film.

Dawn Belmont, 13, said Kelly loved Chinese food, and her favorite singers were Whitney Houston and Belinda Carlisle. Kelly’s favorite movie, which Belmont said they had seen together, was “Dirty Dancing,” a summer release about a shy teen-age girl coming of age.

And many friends recalled Kelly’s love for cats, saying she had decorated her notebooks with pictures of them.

“Everything she liked to do was with cats,” said Natalie Blokdyk, 13. “A teacher would ask what would we like to do a report on, and she’d say, ‘Cats!’ ” Blokdyk said.

Kim Neihaus, 14, a member of Niguel Hills Junior High’s student government, said she had organized a drive to raise funds for Students Against Driving Drunk, an organization that seeks to promote awareness of alcohol abuse among youth.

She said students had raised $300 since the fund-raising effort began Wednesday.

Kelly’s father, Art Sawyer, told the mourners that his family had interpreted the girl’s death as an act of God: “God needed a 13-year-old role model. So he chose Kelly.”

Marcia Sawyer said the service had helped her cope with her daughter’s death: “I feel a lot better walking out than I did walking in. It must have worked.”